Abstract
The great diversity of bat haemosporidians is being uncovered with the help of molecular tools. Yet most of these studies provide only snapshots in time of the parasites discovered. Polychromophilus murinus, a malaria-like blood parasite, specialised on temperate-zone bats is a species that is being ‘rediscovered’. This study describes the infection dynamics over time and between host sex and age classes. For three years we followed the members of three breeding colonies of Myotis daubentonii in Western Switzerland and screened them for the prevalence and parasitemia of P. murinus using both molecular tools and traditional microscopy. In order to identify more susceptible classes of hosts, we measured, sexed and aged all individuals. During one year, we additionally measured body temperature and haematocrit values. Juvenile bats demonstrated much higher parasitemia than any other age class sampled, suggesting that first exposure to the parasite is very early in life during which infections are also at their most intense. Moreover, in subadults there was a clear negative correlation between body condition and intensity of infection, whereas a weak positive correlation was observed in adults. Neither body temperature, nor haematocrit, two proxies used for pathology, could be linked to intensities of infection. If both weaker condition and younger age are associated with higher infection intensity, then the highest selection pressure exerted by P. murinus should be at the juvenile stage. Confusion over the identities and nomenclature of malarial-like parasites requires that molecular barcodes are coupled to accurate morphological descriptions.
Highlights
The great diversity of bat haemosporidians is being uncovered with the help of molecular tools
Besides Plasmodium spp. and the rarer Hepatocystis spp., which infect several orders of Mammalia, bats host at least two unique genera not found outside the Chiroptera [1], Nycteria and Polychromophilus, plus two additional genera known from a single record (Dionisia [2] and Biguetellia [3])
Polychromophilus murinus reached its highest abundances in juvenile M. daubentonii, which have to carry the heaviest burden of infection
Summary
The great diversity of bat haemosporidians is being uncovered with the help of molecular tools. Most of these studies provide only snapshots in time of the parasites discovered. Polychromophilus murinus, a malaria-like blood parasite, specialised on temperate-zone bats is a species that is being ‘rediscovered’. The diversity of haemosporidian parasites of bats suggests, together with a recent phylogeny [4], that the Chiroptera. This has sparked renewed interest in bat haemosporidians, and Polychromophilus spp. have seen a particular rise in attention. Its type host is Vespertilio murinus, but an important reservoir species seems to be Myotis daubentonii, the Daubenton’s bat, a common bat species spread across the Palearctic [1,6,9]
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